One of the nice features of Safari on Mac and iOS is how your bookmarks can stay in sync between your devices, with no plugin required. The one flaw in that setup was that there was no way to sync your Safari bookmarks to any other browser on Windows aside from Internet Explorer. If you wanted a universal bookmark experience, you had to use another browser with cross platform sync support, such as Chrome, on all of your devices. That has now changed. One piece of news almost lost amid the hoopla with iOS 7 and the new iPhones, is that Apple has added Chrome and Firefox to the list of browsers that support iCloud bookmark sync on Windows.

Being a Mac user in a Windows world can be tough. If you’re like me, even if you use Windows professionally, there are certain Mac apps that are essential to your productivity. For me, OmniFocus and OmniOutliner are two that come to mind immediately. In my search for ways to make my Macs play nicer in a Windows universe, I recently discovered one of the coolest gadgets I’ve come across in a long time – the J5 Create Wormhold Switch. It helps me join my Windows and Mac computers – literally.

After making a decision on Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 on one of my Macs, I find myself occasionally using Bootcamp to boot my Macs into Windows. That involves holding down the Option key while booting, and then selecting the Windows partition. If I’m already in Windows, it is easier to reboot into OS X – there is an option in the Windows system tray to reboot into OS X. After a bit of searching, I found a couple of options to similarly boot into Windows from OS X, without having to sit there and hold down the Option key.

I’m hoping that between this blog, Google+, and Twitter, the hive mind can help me choose between Windows 7 and Windows 8 for my Retina MacBook Pro. I’m probably running the risk of starting a debate about the virtues of Windows vs. Mac, or the folly of using Windows to game on a Mac, but damn the torpedoes.

Although I’m now primarily a Mac user at home, that had nothing to do with a dislike for Windows. In fact, I loved Windows 7. Shortly after its release, I installed it on both of my personal machines, and I was one of the early adopters at the office. In years past, I would have been eager to install Windows 8 on my remaining Windows machine and on my Windows 7 partition on my Mac, given my affliction with G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I haven’t felt that urge for Windows 8, and it appears that most other users have felt the same way. Based on some recent data, it seems that Windows 8 is a flop. Why?

Earlier this year, I asked you to let us know how many items you had on your desktop. Answers ranged from 0 to 79 desktop items. In a late reply to that same post, one of the commenters mentioned Rainmeter, a desktop customization tool for Windows. I actually started using Rainmeter a few months ago on the one Windows machine available to me, and it is pretty cool if you really want to geek out your desktop.

As a follow up to my recent post on the World’s Most Awesome Automated Filing System, I intended to write a post on how to get your Windows-only ScanSnap Scanner working on your Mac. This would have been important to those of you who switched from Windows to Mac, and wanted to use your old scanners. Until recently, Fujitsu, the maker of the ScanSnap, created an artificial distinction between their Mac and Windows scanners. The hardware was identical, which should have meant that as long as you had the correct driver for your system, either scanner should have worked on your machine. Unfortunately, Fujitsu built a check into their drivers, so that a Mac would see that you had the Windows-branded version of the ScanSnap, and not be able to use the scanner. This was an incompatibly cooked up out of thin air by Fujitsu. As much as I’m a huge fan of the ScanSnap line, this had the stench of an attempt to create more sales. Fortunately, those days appear to be over.

OmniFocus is a fantastic GTD application, boasting many great features. One of my favorite features is the quick entry box. This allows you to tap a key combination to call up a task entry box. That entry box will hover over whatever app you’re using and then disappear after you enter your task and hit the Return key. The big problem is that OmniFocus is a Mac-only app. I’ve liked it enough as I tested alternatives to Toodledo, that I looked for a way to make it easier to implement in a world dominated by Windows. I found a very slick free app called Win2GTD that brings an OmniFocus quick entry box to Windows.

In my recent kick to clean up and customize my desktop, I discovered one problem- in Windows, no matter what you use for your desktop, you’re stuck with the same boring logon screen whenever you lock your computer or are booting your computer. There are some hacks around this, such as tweaking the registry and the background image file, but I wanted an easier process. Enter LogonStudio, which lets you customize your Windows logon screen.